Thermodiffusion in binary and ternary nonpolar hydrocarbon + alcohol mixtures

Abstract.

Thermodiffusion in complex mixtures, such as associating, molten metal, and polymer mixtures is difficult to model usually owing to the occurrence of a sign change in the thermodiffusion coefficient when the mixture concentration and temperature change. A mixture comprised of a nonpolar hydrocarbon and an alcohol is a complex and highly non-ideal mixture. In this paper an existing binary non-equilibrium thermodynamics model (Eslamian and Saghir, Physical Review E 80, 061201, 2009) developed for aqueous mixtures of alcohols is examined against the experimental data of binary nonpolar hydrocarbon and alcohol mixtures. For ternary mixtures, non-equilibrium thermodynamic expressions developed by the authors for aqueous mixtures of alcohols (Eslamian and Saghir, Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering, DOI 10.1002/cjce.20581) is used to predict thermodiffusion coefficients of ternary nonpolar hydrocarbon and alcohol mixtures. The rationale behind the sign change is elucidated and attributed to an anomalous change in the molecular structure and therefore viscosity of such mixtures. Model predictions of thermodiffusion coefficients of binary mixtures predict a sign change consistent with the experimental data although the model is still too primitive to capture all structural complexities. For instance, in the methanol–benzene mixture where the model predictions are poorest, the viscosity data show that when concentration varies, the mixture's molecular structure experiences a severe change twice, the first major change leading to a maximum in the thermodiffusion coefficient, whereas the second change causes a sign change.